The death of Marcus Ardonius Part 1
by lucius-hark
Summary: The Cullens for now are safe from Volturi pursuit, but that doesn't mean is everyone is safe.   The first to agree to Renesme's innocence, Marcus' usefulness is into question. With Aro and Caius agree on course of action, will Marcus share his wife fate?
1. Chapter 1

Caius stormed himself forward into the room angrily, pushing hard against the ancient wooden doors. It made a creak and crack and sounded as if it was about to be thrown off its hinges. Aro followed, much calmer and reserved in his entrance. Whatever seemed to bother Caius had no affect on him.

'Caius, you should calm yourself.' He said, pressing his hand against Caius shoulder. Who, as he always did by nature, pulled violently away. He turned to face Aro. To most his stature and ominous expression would be terrifying but Aro just looked puzzled. 'I do not understand your anger.'

Caius turned and clasped his hand around the pillar behind him. His fingers broke through it as if it was nothing more the wet clay. With unnatural strength he pulled the rock free of the pillar and unnatural speed, hurled it at Aro. Reading and matching Caius' moves, Aro shifted and let the stone crash into the wall behind. Something crashed and shattered but Aro did not turn to check the damage. He knew well enough after his three thousand years with Caius, never to turn your back on him when he was in a mood such as this.

"You _will _explain Caius' Said Aro firmly, still watching him carefully.

"Why explain, you saw everything" Caius turned his back on Aro, having nothing more to say to him. He walked towards the Chairs at the other end of the room, bending down only a moment to grasp the edge of the table that was sitting in the way of his destination and hurling in across the room.

"I was there, but I see no need for these acts of unnecessary destruction.'

"Just because something is unnecessary doesn't mean it doesn't still exist.'

Aro glided through Caius' rubble and stood staring down at him. Caius sat back, crossing his arms and shutting his eyes, completely ignoring Aro's attempts of intimidation. "I am afraid, my dear Caius, I do not understand."

'No, I do not understand.' Caius remarked.

'I have no time or need for your riddles, Caius.' Aro said, though with not hint of annoyance in his tone.

Caius opened his eyes and looked up at Aro from under his brow. 'If you want it simply Aro, we have no need for Marcus Ardonius.'

Aro stared at Caius, unsure of how to react.

'Lord Marcus, is one of us and…'

'He serves no purpose. I thought that our meeting with the Cullens and defiant alliances showed you his worth. He chose to keep the child alive.'

'So did I.' Aro replied forcefully. Caius smiled a vicious smile as he saw Aro falter. He stood up, much taller then Aro, but still looking at him from under his brow.

'What you chose, you chose out of ambition. The child, abomination or not, has potential, a great asset to the Volturi." He placed his hands softly on both of Aro's shoulder but Aro didn't pull away. He seemed stunned, unable to move. The affect Caius clearly approved of. 'I had my reasons too, ambitious as well, to vote for the child's assassination. Marcus, for no reason I can understand, vote to keep its life.'

Aro looked up at him. 'Marcus voted to keep the child alive out of compassion. He saw no reason to spill blood when he saw the child as no threat.'

'You know very well, looking at the child, that a threat is the only thing that it could be. We both saw ways to resolve the issue; Marcus didn't even notice there was a problem to begin with. What you say is compassion is clearly weakness of mind.'

'His compassion is human.'

'But he is not human, and has not been for three thousand years. That quality maybe the reason you kept him close, or his gift, but he has become too much of burden. I'm sure you had your reasons for keeping him here, even after your sister's death.' Aro shot a helpless glance up at Caius but he never noticed, only continues talking. 'Since that day he has no love of life and no love of the Volturi. He is only attached to us by your will and Chelsea gift.'

Aro looked at Caius, whose lips were turned up in a malicious grin. 'What do you suggest?' Aro asked.

Caius smile grew a little wider, 'I suggest we assassinate Marcus Adonius.'


	2. Chapter 2

If Marcus had thought it odd that they had decided to hold a feast in his honour that night, he had not seemed to show it. Though, very little emotion ever came across Marcus at all. In truth he never found it comforting not to care, it was just better then the alternative.

After three thousand years, apathy just became instinctive.

Aro had knocked on his door a moments before (which in itself was unusual since Aro usually left Marcus to his isolation) announcing, a little less enthusiastic then usual, 'The great feast of Marcus Ardonius'.

'It is the three thousandth year of your new life, and we are to honour you at midnight. We will leave the city, and celebrate a few miles to the north.'

Marcus remembered thinking several things, majority of them insulting, but his mind stopped each thought and left himself vacant. As he always did, he murmured emotionless and obediently to Lord Aro's request. Aro hesitated and hovered at the doorway, staring deeply at Marcus but only for a moment. He then twisted elegantly on his heel and floated down the hall.

Marcus shut the door with little care and locked it behind him then walked across his room to his window again. He spent the majority of his time sitting on the sill staring out into nothingness. But for the first time in a long time, a thought had lingered with him. He raised his head and looked around the arched alcove on the window sill, reaching up his hand to brush along the sides of the wall.

Since Aro had always kept Marcus alone, he would never seen this. If he had he would have noticed the thousands upon thousands of marks carved into the wall. One for each day Marcus had been _ali_ve. It was a process done out of resentment at first, the necessity to keep his mind off darker thoughts. There was in total, as he revised his count, of two thousand one hundred and ninety eight years, give or take a day. He then included the eight hundred years of marks he had engraved into an old wooden chest at the end his bed, from a time he chose to keep separate from the desperation of his afterlife. But Lord Aro's calculation still stood at least a year off. He knew very well Aro didn't make a mistake, by nature Aro was always right. Marcus just dismissed the thoughts of why he had remaining and assumed Aro had a wished to celebrate and needed a reason to do so.

However, his sudden questioning had unintentionally reattached him to his disbanded reality, and an overflow of memories and emotions flew over him.

With his eyes sealed tight, Marcus concentrated his hardest to shut out the memories that seemed to be devouring him. Every other memory was easily subdued but her face just stayed, smiling sweetly at him. He tried to turn from her, but was always pulled back, then, eventually unable to even move from her sight. He was overcome with emotion. Not fear or hate or saddest, but every good feeling he felt when he saw her. These were the emotions he had blocked himself from to begin with.

He had lost her and knew with that love lost all he had was forever and despair. He could never understand why they would not let him escape that.

He had tried to die once but they saved him, he tried to leave but they kept him close.

He was, against his choice, Volturi. Made prisoner in a place he would always, truthfully wish to be rid off. This is where he loved her, this was where they were together, and this is where she died. And he trapped here for all eternity.

But she was here, and he could feel her happiness around him. It was intoxicating. He was forgetting himself. She smiled a little wider, seeing him remembering her and reached her hand toward him. He reached out as well, in hope to touch hers back, but his palm fell instead on an unseen rough surface, not the smooth feel of her cold palm. His fingers brushed down the invisible wall. He could feel grooves, notches, marks, but he could not comprehend any more of what it was.

His concentration on these markings had made him forget her for the slightest moment, and suddenly appalled at his distraction, looked up to see her again. But she was gone. It was just blackness in front of him.

'Didyme?' he whispered to the shadows. '… I don't understand?'

'I'm afraid, my dearest love.' Her voice sang angelically in his ear beside him. He turned to see her smiling sweetly at him, though her eyes were full of sorrow. 'What you are grasping in your hand is reality, it is the truth, it is eternity and it is sorrow. I wish I could have left you with my happiness but that still must leave with me.'

'You are leaving me…Again?" Marcus knew very well that vampires could not cry. He had tried for fifty years to do so the first time he lost her. If he could, he would then, just so she could see. He felt a surge of pain and jealousy as he saw a tear fall from her eye. But she was no longer a vampire. She was no longer anything.

She gracefully moved her head to his, her hands cupping around his face but not quite touching.

'I never left you, Marcus.' she said, her eyes peering deep into his, barely any distance between them. He wished he could feel her breath on his face. She was so close that he should have been able too, but there was nothing. 'You left me.'

'I can't remember you. I do have the courage or soul to do that.' He said, entranced by her eyes. 'It would kill me, and I am not strong enough to spend eternity dying'

she move her face a little closer to his, her lips almost brushing his, her eyes still looking up at him. Anguish overcoming her as she saw the pain he was in.

'I always told you, I preferred you as a coward.' She smiled. 'I love you.'

She shut her eyes and kissed him. He shut his eyes and felt nothing. When he opened them he was staring out the window again, into nothingness.

The clock across the room chimed ten. Marcus watched the seconds move by, slower then usual as well. He was still feeling every moment of it, filled by a mixture of happiness and sorrow, neither of which seemed to disappear.

He looked to the chest at the end of his bed. It sat there calling to him, and drawn to it, he moved across the room and pulled the lock free. It crumbled away in his hand. What rested inside had not seen the light of day, or night in this case, for over two thousand years and with very good reason. It was Didyme. Not Didyme herself of course but everything that embodied her and drew him back to the sorrow of his lose. What he locked away he had always consider has pain. He knew that every time he remembered his once happiness, the depression of eternity that followed would be unbearable. He did not just try to forget her but tried to forget himself.

He brushed his hands past the silks of he wedding dress what hid most of the other contents of the box. He hesitated as he felt the touch of cold metal in his palm. Cupping it gently, he pulled the locket and its chain free from the box. Marcus looked at it as it sat motionless in his hand. This was his. Of everything that he had locked away with Didyme, this was the only thing that was his. Everything else had been gifts of Aro's generosity and love. Or that is what he would come to know them as. But this delicate thing that hung fragile in his hands was his. Made by his own hands and made only for her. The chain had been one of the few belongs he kept from his old life, and the locket was crafted from the bronze from his blade and the jewels from its hilt it was in essence his mortality and humanity that he gave to her. He would have no image of himself to put in it, nor of her. Instead he wrote his love on a small piece of paper crumpled up in between the metal.

Marcus touched the tip of the locket lightly, most of it rusted away, and softly opened. The paper still there, though not crumpled anymore, but gently in place. The words had faded, he had hoped from reading it, though like time. He could barely make out the letter anymore but he always remembered what it said.

_You are my life, my love and my immortality_

They were the first, last and only words that filled his mind when she kissed him. He could not forget them even if he tried. He placed the necklace carefully in his vest pocket then closed the chest again. He had just less than two hours before he would have to return to apathy and emotionless. That was longer then he had allowed himself to feel for over two thousand years. Two hours may not be forever, but it was all he believed he could strong to bear. He pushed the window open and threw himself into the cold night air. Very soon this part of himself would be buried. There would be no feeling soon. But as long as they existed now they would exist for Didyme, and he would spend the last of these moments with her.


End file.
